Apple bucks recession with best ever results

Makes over $10 billion, sells more iPhones than Macs

It's a great time for Steve Jobs to take a little time off from Apple, with the company posting record revenue and profits for the last quarter of 2008.

Apple sold $10.2 billion (£7.3 billion) worth of products in the last three months and made $1.6 billion (£1.1 billion) profit - its best figures ever.

Every area of the Apple line-up saw increased sales. Mac computers sold 2.5 million units, a 9 per cent rise from the same period in 2007, while the company shifted nearly 4.4 million iPhone 3Gs - a whacking 88 per cent growth over sales of the original touchscreen smartphone in 2007.

Piles of 'Pods purchased

Even the humble iPod earned Apple a fair crust, with an astonishing 22,727,000 media players sold. This is the most ever: over five times more than iPhones and 3 per cent more than a year ago.

But what's this? CEO Steve Jobs took time out from his time out to say, "Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history - surpassing $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever."

"Our outstanding results generated over $3.6 billion in cash during the quarter," added Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. "Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2009, we expect revenue in the range of about $7.6 billion to $8 billion."

Interestingly, Apple revealed that international sales now account for 46 per cent of the company's revenue.